Will House Find Courage To Fight For Gun Control?

Rep. Larry Smith said last week the House must find ``the political will`` to stand up to the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) and enact a 15- day waiting period on the purchase of handguns.

But the kind of will that Smith, D-Hollywood, is talking about has been largely absent from Capitol Hill since 1968 when Congress, in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, enacted tougher gun laws. The NRA now hopes to overturn much of what the Congress did in 1968.

The Senate could not muster enough resistance to block the NRA`s effort last summer. In July, 79 of the 100 senators, including Sens. Lawton Chiles, D- Fla., and Paula Hawkins, R-Fla., voted for the NRA-sponsored bill which, among other changes, permits interstate sales and transport of handguns.

The Senate action has enraged police groups and relatives of handgun vicitms. The police groups, for the first time in the history of the handgun law controversy, are taking on the NRA and asking Congress to strengthen federal gun control laws and enact the 15-day ``cooling off`` period.

But these groups may find the House as willing as the Senate to go along with the NRA. NRA officials, repeating their charge that current gun laws are the first step in a conspiracy to take guns away from hunters, collectors and law- abiding citizens who need firearms for protection, are handing out campaign contributions to strengthen their argument, House supporters of stronger handgun laws claim.

The NRA over the years has maintained one of the largest political action committees in Washington. The association`s aim in the current Congress is swift House passage of the Senate handgun law and defeat of another bill banning armor-piercing ammo, also known as ``cop-killer`` bullets.

House Majority Whip Thomas Foley, D-Wash., has been urging Democratic leaders to do what Senate Republicans did and pass the NRA`s bill. A defeat of the bill in the House will harm the Democratic Party`s 1988 presidential fortunes in the South and West, Foley argues.

Democrats can already count on support from the large urban areas, such as New York City, where the proliferation of illegal handguns poses a grave threat to citizens and police. An estimated 80 million guns are in circulation in the country at present.

Many House members, caught between the NRA and the police groups, and many of the lawmakers feel like hunted men and women at the moment.

New Jersey Democrat Bill Hughes, chairman of the House crime subcommittee which is trying to block House action on the Senate bill, said a congressman told him last week: ``The police will forgive me. The NRA never forgets.``